By David Breach
“Simple, David. Just choose your five favourite away or third kits from the team you support.”
Simple? The MoJ request almost paralysed me! I support a team, Southampton, that’s not really had any away/third shirts that stand out to connoisseurs, and certainly nothing that challenges the 1988 Dutch kit, the 1990 West Germany shirt or the 1986 Denmark kit in people’s hearts.
Our home version of the Danish shirt seemed to be ruined by the sponsor and black shorts, and this season’s just doesn’t work because of too-small shoulder Hummel chevrons being used and them not extending down the full, while I don’t feel the style works without the raglan sleeve.
To be fair, Pony did give us some stand-out kits, but that was in a purely negative way. I initially sought security in numbers by asking Saints social media forums for their favourites, but this started to prove the old maxim that a camel was a horse designed by committee – I’d have ended up with five shirts that were merely ‘okay’ instead of making a real impression.
Ever the egotist, I therefore focused on making it personal. To spare you the boredom of just seeing my favourite theme repeated time after time, I set myself parameters – the final selection had to feature five different colour choices from five different manufacturers across the five different decades I’ve supported the Saints, though I may have slightly stretched the boundary of this latter regulation.
It meant our iconic FA cup winning shirt didn’t make it – I wasn’t even two years old at the time. So, here goes – the five Saints away/third kits I would take to my footballing heaven as a reminder of my support, going from most recent to oldest.
2020s (colour: white) – Under Armour third, 2019-20
Notable white shirt shout-out: Hummel third, white and black (1987-89); Hummel away, white and teal (1989-91)
See – I told you I was stretching the decades!
I was excited when Under Armour won the Saints contract. They were ‘the’ name of the time, especially for us in our middle-age who wore their trainers, hoodies and training kit to excess.
However, their Saints kits were generally underwhelming. They were often close to being good, but an added element or supporting colour created a fussiness that reduced the overall impact of the kit. The one exception, for me, was this white shirt – especially as you could buy it without the sponsor.
Despite loving to talk about football kit design, I generally feel that those of us in our middle-age shouldn’t wear the shirts when out and about. The exception I make is for mainly white shirts which I feel have an element of tidiness that is okay for us older gents, and this one’s rather fashionable collar style and the blue and red design surrounding it gave a bit of colour without distracting from its overall cleanliness.
Big caveat – a white shirt with red sash should be our home kit every ten years or so, so I have ignored the Under Armour third kit in this style from 2020-21. It would’ve won this hands-down, but in my opinion, it should be a home kit.
The 2010s (colour: green) – adidas away, 2015-16
Notable green shirt shout-out: Hummel third, with multi-coloured side streaks (2022-23)
Green has been overlooked in the football community for far too long, despite some people’s fears that those wearing it would just blend in with the grass.
Limitations on its use, due to goalkeepers or referees taking preference at various periods of football history, have obviously impacted its wider application, but St Etienne, Hibernian, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have proved how impactful it can be. Saints have only done the green route twice, and I have loved both of them.
What helps with this shirt is that I am an absolute sucker for a sash (Peru and River Plate should be allowed guaranteed qualification for every major tournament so I get to see them more) and adidas really allowed the sash to stand out. The shade of green used in this adidas number is actually quite garish, but the blue sash helps temper its brightness.
Throughout my life, Saints have tended to use manufacturers with a limited presence – Patrick, Hummel, Pony, etc. – so it was strange to see us in an adidas kit for a few years. However, it’s almost as if wearing these shirts inspired us to try to match adidas’s global awareness, and we over-performed with the likes of Sadio Mané, Grazziano Pellè and Dušan Tadić inspiring us to sixth place in the Premier League – just three points behind the two Manchester clubs and ahead of Liverpool and Chelsea – in a season in which we even flirted with qualification for the Champions League.
At one time, it looked as if we might even ‘do a Leicester’ in the very same season Leicester actually ‘did a Leicester’.
The 2000s (colour: black, grey or dark) – Umbro away, 2008-09
Notable dark shirt shout-out: Patrick third, all-red (1980-85); in-house away, dark grey with one red sleeve (2006-07); Under Armour away, black and teal stripes (2017-18)
I love an away shirt that also incorporates the club’s main colours – Umbro produced kits in the mid-to-late 80s for Watford and Rangers (among many) with a two-tone bar across the chest that allowed this benefit to be utilised perfectly.
Umbro also created a shirt in the mid-1990s with two thicknesses of stripe, with the thinner stripe also featuring a white pinstripe. That too allowed a club to feature two of their home colours without it clashing with their home kit – think Sheffield Wednesday and Celtic’s versions of this shirt – and I longed for Umbro to win the Saints contract so I could see us in a black shirt with a red thinner stripe featuring a white pinstripe. The double-diamond completed a notable hat-trick in my mind with Saints’ away shirt for 2008-09, with our red and white subtly appearing at the collar and shoulder.
It’s probably not well remembered by many Saints fans as the club was going down the pan at the time, almost going out of business in the spring and summer of 2009. However, I loved the fairly muted look that allowed the red and white to stand out.
Oh, and I met my girlfriend just as the shirt came out, and her family welcomed me into the family by buying it for me for Christmas that year. She’s now my wife. So perhaps that’s why it is so memorable for me.
The 1990s (colour: yellow) – Admiral third, 1991-93
Notable yellow shirt shout-out: Hummel third (1989-91); in-house third (2002-04); in-house away (2004-06); in-house third (2014-15)
A yellow shirt, with blue trim, has a special place in Saints’ fans memories. It was, after all, the colour scheme used when we won our only major trophy in 1976.
As a fan group, we long for a yellow and blue away kit every season and we have had some strong examples over the years. Indeed, most of our manufacturers have proved it’s very difficult to muck up the colour-scheme – though, once again, Pony tried and their striped version was a definite ‘meh’.
The 2021-22 away shirt should be my favourite – its style and colour-scheme almost perfectly matched the non-league Scottish club I volunteer far too many hours of my time with and their shirt is not only one I have seen my daughter score dozens of goals in, but it was produced by my favourite manufacturer – Hummel. However – that collar! Hummel, what were you thinking?
Therefore, this yellow flame shirt wins it. I had the blue flame version and wore it almost continuously during my final 18 months at sixth-form college, but it was the rarely used, and very rarely sold, yellow version that I really wish I had been wearing while failing to do my homework and being universally ignored by the girls in my year.
It should have appeared with blue shorts, which were produced for it, though its infrequent appearances had it paired with white shorts – usually with blue and yellow trim, but sometimes the shorts were from the blue away version, so featured red and blue trim instead.
The 1980s (colour: blue) – Patrick away, 1980-85
Notable blue shirt shout-out: Hummel away (1987-89); Admiral away, flame shirt (1991-1993); in-house away (2014-15); Under Armour away (2020-21)
Blue is a tricky colour for us Saints fans, as it is the colour of our very loud and annoying neighbours from the other end of the M27 – Portsmouth.
Therefore, manufacturers have to be careful not to make any blue away/third shirt look too ‘Pompey-ish’. Patrick did this to perfection in the first half of the 1980s, using two shades of blue in the same template as the fantastic and memorable home kit.
Forty years later, the shirt in both home and away colours is still my favourite. Part of this is because of the fantastic football played in it by the likes of Kevin Keegan, Steve Moran, David Armstrong and Alan Ball – let’s be honest, even the most garish shirt would be well-remembered because of the quality of football we played during that golden time.
The blue away version was also worn on the day Saints topped the league for the very first time in 1981 with an away win at Middlesbrough. Many people at my primary school owned this shirt. I didn’t and had to settle for ‘just’ the home shirt. I craved this away shirt then; I still crave it now.
I am very aware that these five shirts don’t really give a snapshot of the club as a whole, and there are some fantastic away and third shirts that don’t appear because there was already a more favoured one in that colour or from that decade. But I hope you appreciate that the parameters I set myself did at least give some variety.
Interesting post, i would like to see those shirts you rated as fantàstic but didnt make it to your final selection.
I loved How you associate the shirts with bits if your personal life, at the end its How we create memories from shirts.
As a Saints fan who also likes the 2019/20 third as much as any, it just makes me want to point out that the navy socks on white/navy/red UA third kit were never worn in a match (though I do own them).
Every time Saints wore the shirt they wore the red/white hooped home socks with it.
The kit also features on the programme cover for THAT Leicester match (though I doubt a programme survived the rain that night).